


Worse Things

by bronwins



Category: The West Wing
Genre: 3.4: On the Day Before, Arguing, Bickering, F/M, They love each other, and it almost all blows up in their faces, toby has an ulterior motive, toby tries to help, very slight au where CJ feels bad about making sherri wexler her bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 01:38:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13776936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronwins/pseuds/bronwins
Summary: She watches him shift his weight from foot to foot, eyes alive with the acerbic remarks she knows he's bursting to blurt out. People show you who they are in moments like this, she thinks. People show you how they feel.





	Worse Things

**Author's Note:**

> THEY SHOULD'VE BEEN TOGETHER, DAMMIT
> 
> (not sorkin)

“It really could’ve been worse,” Toby Ziegler, only barely drunk, leans on the doorframe of her office and smiles with just the corner of his lips. “It really could’ve.”

Claudia Jean rolls her eyes.

( _Here we go again._ )

“I’m not in the mood for sarcasm.”

11:45 PM. Fifteen more minutes, she reasons, and she can say goodbye to this place for a weekend. She has plans: plans involving sleep, plans involving a pedicure, plans involving eating the last of that potato salad before it goes bad. They do not include Toby in her office, giving her a dressing-down.

(She thinks of dressing-down in other contexts, and feels her neck burning.)

“I’m serious. Not a lot of people in this building can say they spent their afternoon eviscerating an entertainment reporter.” She grips her pen as though it were a buoy, and tries to keep herself calm.

“Thanks a lot.” What she wants is to forget about the briefing, and the impending articles that will question, at best, her professionalism. She can imagine the headlines: “CJ Cregg Can’t Control Her Temper,” and “Bartlett Administration Takes Another Hit.” CJ rubs the bridge of her nose, and tries to pretend that she can’t feel him watching.

“You have a certain quality of…” This is where he will say something that annoys her. Lips pressed together, hands folded, she waits. “Ahem. Abrasiveness. That I really admire.”

She thinks: perhaps he’s a little more than _barely_ drunk.

“I think you’re the only person I know who insults people when you’re trying to be nice.”

“Sherri Wexler’s got nothing on you.”

“Yeah, she was never exactly next in line for my job, but thanks.” She spits, momentarily turning her attention to the rain-lashed window. This is them, now, at the end of a long, hard week.

(The little voice in her head says: _aren’t they all?_ )

“Are you done?” He asks, loud enough to rattle the windows in the bullpen.

“Does it _look_ like I’m done?”

“It looks like you wrote ‘christ’ about seven times in the margins of your notes on the agriculture  bill.” She turns red, but does not look away.

“I’m going to look like a mean girl. They’ll say I’m bad at my job. Just because I couldn't hold it together for a minute.”

The grey in his hair is more apparent as he shifts further into the office, into the light, and it makes her heart stutter. Andi says it makes him look distinguished, and CJ, very privately, agrees.

“Who cares what they'll say? It was like watching Saturday night wrestling, or whenever wrestling’s on -”

“ _I_ care, and just for the record Tobus, you’re starting to annoy me.”

(Annoy is an understatement. Enrage, perhaps, is closer.)

“Not many people in this building can say they've done the same.”

“There’s no possible way you could need me right now, at -” she looks a the clock. “- 11:58 on a Friday night, right? You’re just talking my head off to drive me to the looney bin? Just making sure, I want to know what to say when the men in white coats come to get me.”

The leaden silence between them is filled by the sound of the wind, howling like a wolf outside, and his pained expression. Somewhere along the line, their discourse lost its rhythm, though she’s not exactly sure of when or why. Sam says it’s cute that they bicker like an old, married couple, but these days, his deft perception of her flaws is grinding her down like a pestle. All at once, she feels old.

“Jesus, CJ, I was just saying.”

“Well, just don’t.”

She watches him shift his weight from foot to foot, eyes alive with the acerbic remarks she knows he's bursting to blurt out. People show you who they are in moments like this, she thinks. People show you how they feel.

"Look. Okay, are you thirsty?"

(Not exactly what she had in mind.)

There’s something in his question that’s alien to her, and she can’t quite put her finger on it. It’s as though a stranger used his voice, his skin; not Toby but his mirror image. Her spine stiffens and shoulders square as involuntarily as breathing.

“No.”

“No, I didn’t mean -” He looks heavenward. “I mean. Like a drink. A fruity cocktail, or whatever. Um, together. You know.”

“Thanks Toby, but if I wanted to drink with a jackass I’d head to a farm and start pouring sour mix in the trough. Goodnight.”

“CJ,” She grabs at her coat, willing the tears building in the back of her skull to dissipate. “Can you just - can you wait? Please?”

And something in her stomach twists delicately, deliciously, like warm fingers around a smooth, cool stone. The clock on the wall - now at 12:03 - slows to a halt.

( _Um, together_ _. You know._ Yes. Now, she does.)

“I know we’ve been, uh, kind of _off_ recently,” he says, quickly, as though she’ll cut him off. “And I know it’s probably mostly my fault, but I'm trying, and I miss the way things used to be. I want to be good again.”

“Toby," People show you how they feel in moments like this. "Are you asking me out?"

He tucks his chin to his chest and looks at her from under his furrowed brow, the picture of the precocious Brooklyn boy she’d never known.

(She really ought to let him know one of these days that he’s adorable.)

“Only took three scotches and a fight to get the courage up,” he murmurs. “Not too bad, right?”

She shrugs on her coat and smiles.

“It really could’ve been worse.”


End file.
